Understanding Exposure, Fourth Edition: How to Shoot Great Photographs with Any Camera

When I got into digital photography a couple of years ago, I bought an embarrassingly large number of photography books. Some of them were a bit useful, but mostly they were very much the same. Somehow, I ended up with both the third and fourth edition of Understanding Exposure, both of which I just started to read very recently. Although a bought these books in 2016, they sat on my shelf and I wasn't entirely ready for them until now. I was initially dismayed that I had unknowingly bought the same book in two editions, but now I'm quite happy about that. Topically they cover the same things, but they are actually different in terms of photos used and descriptions of the photos.This book is incredibly readable, but the information meant more to me now that I have a couple of years of photo experience and learning behind me. I'm finally ready to benefit from Mr. Peterson's approach to teaching exposure. What he does that has been so helpful to me is that within a discussion of a topic—Overcast Frontlight, as one example—he provides a picture or two and then tells how he set up his exposure...which part of the photo he took his exposure reading on, and why, and briefly discusses any problems you might have in figuring out how to expose a particular scene, or how to get an effect such as implying motion, and so on. He discusses exposure meters and how they work, sidelight, backlight, and so many other situations in which you might be shooting a photo. In addition, for every photo he tells you the lens and camera settings used, which I find incredibly helpful as I learn the principles he is teaching.As it turns out, I love and will keep both editions. The photos described within each book are all different so it's really like having two separate books. I might not recommend the book (yet) for total beginners, but if you have some time behind a camera and know the basic photographic principles well, I haven't yet come across a book (well, two books!) more enjoyable or useful than Understanding Exposure. I would give this book ten stars if I could, it's that good.

The bible for photographers. I’ve had all the editions. Buy this if you are thinking about picking up a DSLR or are an experienced photographer trying to improve.

I purchased this book as I've always been particularly interested with low-light level photography and astrophotography. I noticed almost immediately I could take better photographs or images by bumping down an ISO level with my newly purchased Nikon D5600. I then realized I needed to learn how to use manual mode for manually choosing aperture and shutter speed for optimizing my skills, and shortly later I purchased this recently written book.PROS1) Includes at least one really good photo, if not two or three good photos at times, depicting each photo taking scenario described.2) Many photography taking scenarios described, targeting mainly using Manual mode, as the book's main theme is about using Manual mode instead of Program (Automatic) mode.3) I enjoy hearing those with experience, describing their personal recommendations based on sound reasoning. (eg. Author prefers using Center-weighted light metering, as it's a technique that has yet failed and has almost always worked. I, myself, was mainly using spot metering up until this recommendation within the book, but I still have a strong preference for spot metering due to my subjects usually causing difficult positions.)4) Author uses one or two good digital cameras (eg. Mostly Nikon D800E images with a few Nikon D3X images.), and he does thoroughly explain each scenario within generic camera terminology.CONS1) First chapter is extremely wordy! In other words, the author tends to go significantly astray, whether intending humor or reflecting needlessly upon a scenario. I do not mind one or two astray comments (or jokes) within the introduction or first chapter, or even throughout the book, but the first chapter was extremely taxing upon my free time for reading! Halfway through the book now and thankfully the (excessive) comments were kept to the first chapter!2) Does not describe how the digital camera performs light metering, until halfway through the book. Light metering becomes extremely critical when taking any photos or images of black or dark colored subjects, such as the book describes black cats. (I just happen to have a black cat, and was using him for photography imaging practice alongside the book! Other less knowledgeable people might have significant issues if they're unaware of this while reading the beginning half of the book.)3) The EBook version seems to be an EPUB file format with a size of ~10MB. Clearly after seeing the file size not disclosed by either the book publisher or the referred book vendor sites, the EPUB book format's included photo images are of very low resolution! Maybe this is because I purchased the book from Google Play, but I'm presuming all the EBook formats for this book are going to contain similar image resolution for all the formats, since the publisher is referring EBook purchases directly to the Amazon, IPad, Android specific book vendors. As I stated within this review, would be nice to have a PDF format containing much higher resolution images! (Added this #3 con and purchased the EPUB version on 2017.08.07.)TIP: As with all books containing color photographs, best to buy the book instead of an EBook version. As of yet, I do not think there is an EBook or PDF version for this book, and would only buy the PDF version if the PDF version contained all the color photographs within the print copy. Else, and somewhat self explanatory, the EBook version would be useless without any of the color photographs! On the flip, a college/university level book could likely describe all the photographs within the book, if a well explained description for each photograph were provided. It's how us older folks learned long ago, when photographs were rarely used within books or were too costly to publish!